“He’s got a point,” Clive says to Sota. “Are you sure nobody else in your family had a hand in this?”
“Nobody in my family would risk angering me.” Gamagori doesn’t even give Reese the honor of looking in his direction, a slight that Reese doesn’t miss. The blood rushes to his cheeks as he takes a step towards Gamagori, but Hollett clamps a hand on his shoulder and guides him back. Clive pulls a bottle of Pepto from his pocket and swigs directly from it as Hollett half leads, half pulls him to a seat.
The awkward drama is blessedly interrupted by the arrival of a broad but soft looking young man in khaki slacks and a wrinkled yellow Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’s carrying a battered pink binder that’d be at home in the locker of a ten-year-old girl between classes. It’s full to bursting, a heavy red rubber band barely keeping it closed. He comes down the aisle with a long stride, handing it out to Clive Reese like it’s an offering.
Clive snatches it from his hands. “Where’s Calvin?”
The man shrugs. “Gone. He left the house just after Hollett and his men left with him,” he points at me. “He’s not answering his cell and he’s turned off the GPS in his car and his phone.”
I’m actually starting to worry about Clive Reese. The man looks like a prime candidate for a major coronary. He stares the messenger down for a few seconds, then turns around and slams the binder down on the end table by the couch. I step up to take a closer look.
The binder is about two inches thick, stuffed with a spiral notebook, a sheaf of loose papers and what looks like a folded map. A couple of the papers look old and curl at the ends – more like parchment from a scroll than something from a stationery store. Up close I can see that the binder has been well used, cracking a bit at the seams, with a glossy picture on the front cover of a kitten prancing in a field of daisies.
“Strange that she left this behind,” I mutter.
“She didn’t leave it,” Clive corrects me. “I confiscated all her things when I locked her in.”
Father of the Year might have actually done something beneficial. I open the binder and let the papers avalanche out. Clive Reese grabs a handful of pages off the table and wags them in my face. “See what I mean?” he spits. “She hid their tracks. We can’t tell a damn thing from these.”
Despite their motion I can see that the pages are all blank. Not even the indentations of a pen or pencil on them. They look factory fresh.
“Put them down on the table,” I say with enough authority to make Sota Gamagori raise an eyebrow. Reese looks like he just took a slap in the face but drops them in a pile on top of the binder. Satisfied that he’s not going to get grabby again, I pick up the topmost sheet.
It looks like it was torn out of its notebook, standard three-hole punched lined 8x10. I run my palm over the paper to smooth it out where Clive’s grip had wrinkled it, and as I do the secrecy spell that I knew had been laid over it snaps and the hidden handwriting on it rises into visibility. It’s annoyingly neat, each tiny letter precise and identically sized. I’d almost think that it was printed from a computer, but I can see the tiny blobs of ink where Celeste’s pen touched the paper at each stroke. I lean over the page, scanning. It doesn’t take long for me to get the gist.
Vampires. The page reads like a direct transcription of a book about vampiric legend. I wonder why she didn’t simply photocopy the pages or print them from the internet. Maybe she couldn’t mask a printout the same way she could with her handwriting.
I look deeper through the material, and predictably it’s garbage. Typical legends, the kind that have been mined for literally countless books, movies, TV shows, games, breakfast cereals – anything and everything under the sun, no pun intended. The legends make for great fodder for these things, but those of us who have been in the shadowy world those movies depict know that true vampires are absolutely nothing like what the world thinks.
To be honest, they’re wusses.
They’re creatures of mist and fog, completely incorporeal. They have no fangs, don’t give a good goddamn about wooden stakes, they have no head to remove, garlic and silver pass right through them, but they can be repelled by intense light of any kind and if natural sunlight hits them they simply evaporate. While they’re not the juggernaut killing machines pop culture would like to think they are they seep right in through your weather stripping, settle over you and leech the blood right through your pores without disturbing your sleep in the least. You wake up groggy and thick headed and blame the alarm clock for waking you up too early and pledge to go to bed at a more reasonable hour tomorrow. Celeste surely knew this, so why waste her time researching facts she knows are wrong?
More pages, and the pattern is clearly established. Each page describes in vivid detail a different vampire mythology from around the world. The callicantzaro from Greece. The Russian upyr. Jiang Shi, the “hopping vampire” from China. Celeste has been putting a lot of effort into her research, but nothing I’ve found so far tells me why. She might as well have been writing down particulars about the different members of the Avengers.
When I look up from the Jiang Shi page Clive Reese is hovering less than a foot over my head.
“Vampires?” he snorts in disgust. “That’s their big secret? Goddamn vampires?”
“So far that’s all I’m finding.” I sit back and look at Sota Gamagori. “Did Kenta have a notebook or journal too?”
He shakes his head. “No. We found nothing like that. Kenta is a very strong young man, both physically and magically, but the written word is a lover he’s never taken. He had no books, blank or otherwise.”
“And I’m not seeing any handwriting here apart from Celeste’s.” I look at Reese. “Why vampires? And why would she put so much work into copying down by hand every wrong thing the world thinks about vampires and none of the right ones?”
“Who the hell knows. Vampires. If that’s their master plan to destroy the town they’re both stupider than I’d have ever thought.”
“I don’t think it is. Not their entire plan, at least, and I don’t think you do either. Is your daughter stupid, Mr. Reese?”
A deep breath deflates him. “No. Insane, yes, but not stupid. She’d be easier to deal with if she was.”
“And, while his judgment is sometimes lacking, Kenta is also no fool,” Gamagori adds.
I flip through more pages, then slow down to read them. Most of it is apocryphal, with little in the way of supporting evidence. A Celtic legend here, a Russian one there, even something about Roswell at one point. That last one’s bullshit. I’ve been there, and while the government is in fact keeping a very large secret there at the air base it has nothing to do with aliens.
The pages after that show a sudden change in their research, as they begin to describe not vampires, but binding hexes. Imprisonment spells. Mystical locks and barriers. Interesting segue. Curious, I delve deeper into the notebook, but the next page stops me.
The page is about two-thirds full of writing, and as I look it over I get the evening’s next surprise. It’s written in a slashing, ideographic language that I don’t recognize, and I’ve seen spells and curses scrawled out in most of the world’s languages. Enough to identify the intentions of most of them, at least, but this one’s got me beat. I turn the page over and there’s more there. It’s written in the traditional Roman alphabet, but the words are gibberish. A phonetic translation of the other side? I read the words in my head (there’s no way I’m speaking them out loud), but they don’t ring any bells. I’ve never come across this language. For some reason I find this unsettling.
There’s a page stapled to it, one of the parchment ones. I can feel its age through my fingertips, the dry, powdery vellum. There are no words written on this one, but a complex pattern of ritualistic marks in the shape of a clean oval. At the center is an ideogram of slashed angles, short harsh pen strokes combined into a brutal web of a hieroglyph.
At last, there’s something I find familiar, though
I’m not comforted in the least. I’ve seen this symbol before, a long time ago. I can’t place it, though. That means that we in the Aegis didn’t have to deal with whatever is behind the symbol on anything near a regular basis. While most of the people and monsters we dealt with are fairly typical, or at worst understood, we always knew that there are always more esoteric things lurking out there just waiting for their turn. I’m past unsettled now and sinking towards outright worry.
“Hollett,” I call out. “Ever seen anything like this?”
He comes over and crouches down next to the table, looking at the parchment. “No.”
So much for that hope. I set that paper aside, separate from the others. The remaining pages are more of the phonetic writing, plus a short series of numbers to finish it all off. Some kind of code? If it is nobody in either family can decipher it.
The last thing in the binder is a folded map of Superstition Bay. It’s not one they picked up at a gas station. It’s a high quality topographic map of the entire area, about four feet squared. The town is a well-defined series of dark, shaded blocks against the rolling greens and blues of the land and the sea floor. I hold the map up at an angle, letting the different stage lights play over it, and in a second I find what I’m looking for. There are faint indentations where the lovebirds ran a ruler or a similar straight edge over it. Tracing coordinates. Aha!
I turn back to the page with the numbers, moving them around in my head, then match them up to the latitude and longitude. My findings follow theirs, and my index finger makes two stops on the map. Once I know where to look I can see the barest depressions in the map where something like a capped pen pressed down on the paper. Hollett hands me a pen when I ask for one and I dot the two locations.
“These areas mean something to them,” I say. “I have no idea what, but there’s a reason they spent so much time finding them. There’s something or someone they need at each spot. One of them is downtown, the other looks like it’s out somewhere in the farm land outside of town.”
“I thought the only things farmed around here were alligators.” Clive Reese sounds equal parts surprised and revolted.
“You should learn about the town you live in,” I tell him with a look over at Hollett. “There are acres of farmland a few miles inland from here. That’s where Tony and Maria are heading.”
Both Clive Reese and Sota Gamagori are on their cell phones before I finish my sentence.
I gather up the papers and the map, stick them all back in Celeste’s binder and tuck it under my arm as I stand up from the table. “Whatever it is that they’re after they’re going to want to get them fast. It looks like they spent a lot of time double checking the coordinates for the farm, which makes me think that’s their main focus. We should start there.”
“My men are on their way to both of the coordinates you’ve discovered,” Sota Gamagori says as he sets his cell phone down on his ironing-board lap.
“Ours, too,” Clive says. He comes over to stand in front of me. “You need to go, too.”
Sota nods his head once. “You precipitated this. It is your responsibility.”
“I am very aware of my responsibilities, Mr. Gamagori. Much more aware than you are.” I look at Clive. “I’ll need my things back.”
This time it’s Hollett who gives the nod. One of the crewcut bookends carries over a black drawstring bag and hands it to me. All my stuff is inside. I check the magazine to make sure it’s still full, jam the rest of the odds and ends into my pockets and wedge my holster into my belt. “Are you going to give me a lift back to my Jeep?”
“You can get your car later,” Reese says. “Mister Hollett here will drive you, and watch you every step of the way.” On cue, like a good mercenary, Hollett comes up and stands next to Reese.
“I also would like to send someone with you.” Gamagori doesn’t need to beckon. The girl steps up next to him, but deferentially slightly back and to the side. “My daughter Nariko will represent our family in this action.”
Nariko Gamagori hasn’t blinked since I first saw her, as far as I can tell. Her eyes are wide but her gaze is wider, constantly probing the area for something that would require what I’m guessing are her very specific skills. She’s creeping the hell out of me. Andrew Hollett might be a pitbull, but Nariko Gamagori is a viper.
This is going to be one hell of a carpool.
I wait for Hollett to lead the way, then I fall in behind him with Nariko right next to me. We’ve gone about fifty feet when Clive Reese’s voice calls out.
“DeLong,” he yells to me. “You see what comes of being a hero.”
“Reese,” I yell back. “I don’t expect you to understand.” Then I turn and hurry up the aisle. Hollett and Nariko didn’t wait for me.
Nine
In Superstition Bay a twenty-minute ride is a marathon, except in the height of summer when it’s business as usual. Six days before Christmas at eight o’clock at night, there are more ghosts out tonight than people, though thankfully they don’t do much driving. It still takes what feels like an eternity to make it to our destination.
We’re back in the same van that brought us to the library, and the silence is palpable. It’s like the worst first date imaginable, except with a date there’s always a chance the night will turn out to be enjoyable. I have no such illusions tonight.
After a couple of agonizing minutes, I look to my left at Hollett behind the wheel.
“So,” I say to break the ice. “Automatons, huh?”
He doesn’t look at me, but I can see a tiny muscle clench in his cheek. “I argued against them. I was overruled.”
I let that float for a moment, knowing where I want to go next but unsure if the ice has been broken enough. No way to know except to try.
“What do you make of the girl?” I ask.
He takes a moment to choose his words. “When I got here she was weird, stand-offish. Nice talker, nice looker, but it was like she was someplace else all the while she was talking to you. Now it’s like Reese said. She’s clinically psychopathic, and she’s gotten worse over the last couple of weeks.”
“How did she meet Kenta? Did Clive let her out unescorted?”
He laughs. “Fat chance of that. She was slipping out nights, just like in the movies. I don’t know how they first met, but that was how they fed their romance.”
“They met at the police station,” Nariko adds. Her voice is smooth and surprisingly low-pitched, but very, very soft, an unintentional whisper. “After one of the fights. Her father had to post bail for his sons and brought her along. Father’s attorney, Akihiko, was there, too, doing the same for our men, and he brought Kenta along so he could see how to do it. Clive Reese and Akihiko started to argue. They barely noticed Kenta and Celeste talking in the corner.”
“Kenta told you this?”
“Yes, after their romance was discovered.”
“How heartwarming. Love at the police station. Sounds like a country song.”
I can see that Hollett has a retort coming, but before he can fire it off his cell phone chimes, followed like an echo by Nariko’s. The responsible driver, Hollett lets his ring while Nariko answers hers. She listens intently, then hangs up.
“They are at the farm,” she informs us. Hollett responds by pressing harder on the gas pedal, and inertia pulls me into my seat as the incredibly responsive van leaps forward.
The suburban landscape changes abruptly as we speed further inland, the clustered lights of civilization ceding to flat farmlands in almost no time at all. The streetlights stay behind, so once past the town limits we’re reduced to using headlights and moonglow to find our way. Hollett doesn’t miss a turn, which makes the trip seem faster than it really is. We wind through narrowing roads, increasingly jostled by potholes, until our destination looms into sight.
The farm has been dead for a long time. The fields are grown over with knee high winter-dead weeds like they’re a backwards type of new crop. Honey locust trees,
their winter-stripped limbs gift-wrapped in sheaths of five-inch thorns, have taken root in scattered clumps around the neglected property. The driveway up to the house is rutted, washed out dirt with potholes big enough to eat a SmartCar, and the house squatting lifelessly at the end of it looks like a murky, decomposing anemone on the floor of a cold, lifeless sea.
Before we get to the house we come across the first car – a dark Dodge Magnum slewed cattycorner across the driveway. Both doors hang empty, and the hatch on the back yawns wide. The interior light gives the car a jack-o-lantern face. Beyond it, the headlights illuminate three other vehicles: one SUV, a monstrous cranberry red Ford Raptor and a Camaro with way more mud splattered on it than either the designers or owner intended. All of them are motionless and silent in the moonlight.
A wide set of tracks from some kind of large vehicle shows like a scar across the grassy earth, arcing from the driveway back to the road. Judging from their depth the vehicle left at speed, and not long ago.
“The truck is one of ours,” Nariko’s voice is almost lost in the night.
“And the Magnum belongs to Celeste,” Hollett says quietly. “It was stolen a week ago.”
“She must have stashed it somewhere for the getaway.”
Hollett turns off the van and we wait quietly. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Screams? Gunfire? Purple lightning? None of it happens. There’s nothing moving out here but us.
Hollett, Nariko and I get out of the van into the clammy night air, Hollett and I covering behind our doors and Nariko standing at the rear. I draw the Springfield, and in the periphery of my vision I see Hollett pull something dark and unreflective from the small of his back and point it towards the car. I’d bet anything under the sun that Nariko has also armed herself back there.
Hollett makes an almost inaudible hiss. When I look at him he jerks his head towards the car with questioning eyes. You or me?
I point to my chest. I’ll take point. Whatever he’s packing there is magical, so no matter what kind of attack it is it won’t affect me if there’s a sudden crossfire. He can’t say the same about my bullets. I slip quickly out from behind the van door and move swiftly up to the Magnum, keeping the gun level on the open hatch. Hollett and Nariko follow, him ten feet behind me on my right, her fifteen feet back on my left.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 8
